This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

In order of presentation by highly-regarded Mexican American Studies scholars, they collectively amount to a solid protest primarily against the controversial Mexican-American textbook authored by Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle titled, "Mexican American Heritage," that is currently getting considered for adoption by Texas' State Board of Education (SBOE).

The SBOE will take up the matter at their September 13, 2016 meeting (which continues through Friday, September, 2016), with a final vote on the textbook taking place at their November 15, 2016 meeting—both in Austin, Texas, William B. Travis Building, 1701 North Congress, Austin, TX.

PLEASE PUT THESE TWO DATES ON YOUR CALENDARS SO THAT YOUR VOICE CAN BE HEARD.

Today's press conference takes place on the heels of the June 16, 2016 Mexican American Studies Summit that took place in San Antonio, as well as on 4 years of organizing by the NACCS-Tejas Foco statewide organization that is a regional member site of its national parent organization by the same name (i.e., National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies).

The San Antonio summit addressed the textbook and other matters pertinent to Mexican American and ethnic studies, generally. What follows are scholar's expressed critique of the textbook:

Dr. Emilio Zamora-UT-Austin

Dr. Liliana Patricia Saldaña-UTSA

Dr. José María "Chema" Herrera-Cotera-UTEP

Kathy Miller, Director of the Texas Freedom Network, along with others that made comments like Dr. Emilio Zamora, Juan Tejeda, and Anita Quintanilla who caps off the whole press conference by saying that Texas and the Southwestern United States is our "Motherland" and that we (Mexicans/Mexican Americans) are not illegal.